By Dr. Leslie Van Romer

Welcome aboard to America’s diet-go-round, one which you may have ridden a few dozen times before. You plan. You measure. You count. You weigh. You sacrifice. You deprive. You starve. You crave. You sneak (as if you can really sneak from yourself). You cheat. You guilt. You beat yourself up (you’re a master at that). You lose. You gain. You lose. You gain. You lose. You plateau. You plateau. You plateau and, f-i-n-a-l-l-y, you lose – a pound. Then you go to a friend’s house for dinner and gain two pounds back. Then you keep gaining, pound by pound, until you are right back where you started, or even heavier. You get depressed, frustrated, and feel like a hopeless failure, one more time. You give up – what’s the point? No matter what you try, nothing works – for good. You vow to ban diets forever, until that next quick-fix, fat-melting, no-fail diet comes along, appealing to your sense of desperation to be slim and luring you into believing that it would somehow be different from the dozens of diets you tried before. You climb back aboard the diet-go-round, going round and round, with the scale going up and down, and ultimately up – and your hopes spiraling down one more time.

The good news is: you didn’t fail; the diets failed you! Whew – what a relief! Most diets-of-the-day are designed to fail. Let’s sort myth from fact and stop the dizzying diet-go-round madness once and for always.

MYTH: To lose weight, you must control your hunger drive.

FACT: Your hunger drive cannot be controlled. It’s an inborn instinct. Like all instincts – thirst, sleeping, breathing, sex – it keeps you alive and the human race thriving. When you’re hungry (not just bored or sad or upset), do the novel thing – eat! Just choose foods that give you the best nutrition for your calorie buck: fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains (like brown rice, not breads) and beans. To lose weight, you must satisfy your hunger drive, not wage war with it.

MYTH: High protein foods satisfy your hunger drive.

FACT: Of the three major nutrients, carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, carbohydrates sourced by unrefined whole fruits and vegetables satisfy your hunger drive, not the protein found in animal products. Beef, poultry, pork, and fish contain exactly 0% carbohydrates. If you are eating a high protein diet sourced by animal products, you are not getting enough unrefined carbs, responsible for triggering your brain to tell you when to stop eating, which is before your stomach begs for mercy.

MYTH: To lose weight, you must starve yourself with pre-measured, pre-weighed, pre-counted restricted portions.

FACT: To lose weight, you must feel full and satisfied, not starving from baby-size portions. You can only starve yourself so long before that hunger drive takes command with such unstoppable power that you eat anything and everything in sight. If you fill up on the best-for-you foods, you can and should eat as much as you want without fussing, counting, measuring, weighing, depriving, starving, craving, and bingeing – and putting on extra pounds – ever again.

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